Cares Act Spending Plan -ARP Grant Funds

Central A&M will continue to be vigilant in the monitoring of the health and safety of our students, staff, and families as we plan for each school year. We will continue to engage and communicate with our school community in a timely and effective manner throughout the school year. Central A and M has held stakeholder meetings to continuously evaluate our plans. We will use social media, survey, round table discussion and emails to all CAM stakeholders to continually assess the most important needs of our district during the upcoming months and years during the pandemic. District leadership will continue to seek answers from students, parents, staff and community as to the needs of our district and community.  The public will be informed through our district website and Parent communication system of any changes and how this plan will be used.

Guidelines and recommendations are ever changing, and as a result, this plan must remain fluid, we will be in constant review of the plan and no less than every 6 months. Central A&M will continue to gain public input through surveys, round table discussion and through public comment with all stakeholders, including student; family; school and district administrators, teachers, leaders, and the union including disability rights organizations and stakeholders representing the interests of children with disabilities, English learners, children experiencing homelessness, children and youth in foster care, migratory students, children who are incarcerated and other unserved students. 

Future changes to this plan will be done administratively and to the extent practicable, consistent with current CDC/ISBE/IDPH guidelines. We understand that there will be extenuating circumstances for some families and we are happy to address those on an individual basis. We believe this plan is comprehensive in providing the best environment for our students academically, physically, socially and emotionally.

Monies from the ARP ESSER Funds will be spent in the following areas: 

Central A and M is concerned about our students who have lost valuable instruction due to the pandemic. Assessment is ongoing. Formative and summative assessment as well as achievement of students during the past year is being used as informative practice in understanding the level and depth of student educational loss. Anecdotal information form parents, caregivers and teachers as well as the students themselves is being assessed.

Approximately $420314 (salary and benefits) has been spent for personnel to work on this learning loss as well as social emotional and behavioral problems that we have seen surface from the pandemic. Since the 2021 SY we have held Summer School for our most needy students in regards to learning loss. We have planned services regarding mental health wellness and academics in both summer school and regular school.  After school services have also been present each year within the first weeks of school and for the entire school year.  We have hired 2 FTE counselors for our elementary students and 1 FTE RTI coordinator and 1 FTE aide for 2 years as well as a contractual Social Worker. Families and students who needed remote access during the remote phase of the pandemic were given that access through Hot Spots ($30226), ($10, 345 was spent on Promethean boards for teachers to be able to help with student achievement and to mitigate learning loss. 

We will be using a large portion of our funds from ESSER III ($743,566) to complete the update to our HVAC and ventilations systems and our outdoor lighting in our 60-year-old buildings, providing health benefits to all who work and learn and enter CAM. We previously used all of ESSER II monies ($545,394) for this initial phase of this project.  
Health cleaning protocols were followed and ($20712) was spent on supplies to navigate that process.